Printing old dias - a kick in the ...

[Steinar]

If you are like me, having a suitcase of old dias on the attic, just waiting for that perfect day to do something about them.. I hereby direct a kick in the â?¦

Seriouslyâ?¦ or, not that seriously.. I thought I should share how I after years of delaying it, finally did something about them. It amazed me how cheap and easy it was to get the old pictures down on paper ready for album. Also, itâ??s not that boring as you may think.. glancing back on the good old days.

First I brewed up a big can of coffee.
Then it was time to set up the scanner and computer. Scanner needs to have a â??dias functionâ?? with a frame to place them in, mine was less expensive than I though it would be and worked great. I used 400dsi, making each picture about 2.5mb. Would probably use 300dsi if I should start over again..
After that it was just a matter of feeding the scanner with dias, I used ethanol to clean the dias, before placing them on the scanner. It removes stains/dust and does not leave any residue. Took me one hour for each cassette, about 2min pr. picture. (just not smoke while doung this!)

Having them all on the disk, I spend twice as much time editing. You could use Photoshop, but I prefer Paint Shop Pro on this type of editing.
-crop them into the right size with the crop function. You will probably have to cut away a little on top and bottom.
-then find the setting that makes the pictureâ??s colors best in a function called â??one botton fixâ?? or something like that. If you are as lazy as me, this setting can then be used on all pictures by just one click on the function. Itâ??s amazing how much you can improve the colour by doing this..
-then, it was dust removing time.. There is a â??dust remover filterâ?? I first ran them all trough, this removes the smallest â??stuffâ??. But most is still there, so you may drop this step. The visible dust can easily be removed the scratch remover tool. Shaped as a scraper.
-Then I uploaded the pictures on the internet for developing, four days later they arrived for about 75% less than what used to pay in the â??analogâ?? days.. Very happy with the result, now the future generations have something to laugh at also


Hope it was useful for some of you guys typing this down, the most difficult part about it is not to delay it another year or two